We're super-excited that our own Katie Carguilo won the Northeast Regional Barista Championship (NERBC) in New York this weekend! Congrats to Katie and to Brady Guinn from Boston's Pavement Coffeehouse who finished second in the NERBC Brewer's Cup using El Gavilán. And, big-big thanks to the many talented competitors who used Counter Culture Coffee in the competition. Please join us in wishing Katie luck at the United States Barista Championship, April 19-22, in Portland, OR.

In addition to her high-scoring espressos and cappuccinos, Katie's signature beverage was comprised of nectarine and lemon juices combined with jasmine green tea, sparkling water, and vinegar topped with an espresso preparation of Haru (from a cooperative in Yiragacheffe, Ethiopia) and served in a grappa glass.

"All of those flavors are in the fermentation water," notes Katie, referring to the production process of ripe coffee cherries in Ethiopia in which coffee beans (seeds) are submerged in water to help to remove the fruity mucilage.

The Haru espresso component for her drink was specially sorted for pre-roast bean size consistency by our roasting department. "It helps the coffee ultimately taste better," observes Katie, "because it can be roasted more evenly." For her espressos and cappuccinos, she used Idido Natural Sundried.

"Winning is really exciting," Katie acknowledges, "but even the other times I've competed and not won were very informative and rewarding. It's one thing to make beverages and taste them and to hone your technique but it's another experience entirely to have other people give you feedback that's completely honest. It was so much fun."

Last year, our Sustainability Committee introduced the Counter Culture Employee Green Fund, which offers each employee the opportunity to apply for up to $500 a year in matching funds toward a personal sustainability-related project.

In November, I received matching support to help cover the cost of fiber cellulose attic insulation to increase the climate efficiency of my home – reducing the consumption of heating and cooling resources and costs.

The matching fund helped employees with a wide range of projects in 2011. Josh Dugue in Chicago bought a bike to rely less on a car for transportation. Ben Helfen in Atlanta bought an old-style, zero-emission push mower. In Asheville, Counter Culture co-funded Mary Christensen's worm composting and garden supplies.

Other projects included gym memberships, a high-efficiency washing machine, a rain-water garden irrigation system, home fitness equipment, and more. In its first year, the Green Fund contributed $2,266.01 in matching funds – a great start to the program. We'll keep you updated in 2012 as more projects arise.

After a fascinating and surprising first foray into carbon-footprint measurement at the end of 2009 – a project to track the carbon footprint of Finca Mauritania's coffee from seed to cup – we decided to commit wholeheartedly to carbon neutrality for the company. We set a target date of 2015 because, to tell the truth, we weren't entirely sure what we were signing ourselves up to do.

Every once in a blue moon, a project surprises you by progressing more quickly than anticipated and this Counter Culture's carbon neutrality is a great example of that variety of rare surprise: I'm thrilled to announce that it we reached our five-year goal in only two years and achieved carbon neutrality at the end of 2011 by offsetting our 576-tonne greenhouse gas footprint through tree-planting and fuel-efficient stove construction in Central America.

After a fascinating and surprising first foray into carbon-footprint measurement at the end of 2009 – a project to track the carbon footprint of Finca Mauritania's coffee from seed to cup – Counter Culture decided to commit wholeheartedly to carbon neutrality for the company. We set a target date of 2015 because, to tell the truth, we weren't entirely sure what we were signing ourselves up to do.

Every once in a blue moon, a project surprises you by progressing more quickly than anticipated and this Counter Culture's carbon neutrality is a great example of that variety of rare surprise: I'm thrilled to announce that it we reached our five-year goal in only two years and achieved carbon neutrality at the end of 2011 by offsetting our 576-tonne greenhouse gas footprint through tree-planting and fuel-efficient stove construction in Central America.

Let's take a step back to the measurement, though, shall we? We arrived at that 576-tonnes-of-greenhouse-gas figure with the help of Vancouver-based Climate Smart, a foot printing organization that takes a unique approach to auditing by empowering businesses to measure themselves. I spent the first half of 2010 working closely with Climate Smart and collecting data from different areas of our business to understand the whole picture of our emissions, from the large impact of long-distance employee commutes around our NC headquarters to the even larger impact of our international and domestic air travel. Needless to say, we have many opportunities for improvement!

Having established a baseline, we turned our attention to potential areas of reduction, which is daunting in any circumstances and particularly challenging during a period of growth. As we neared the end of 2011, we realized that we hadn't made progress in energy reduction anywhere (with the notable exception of our Atlanta Training Center, where Ben Helfen successfully halved our office's energy bills over the prior year by powering down machines, turning off lights when they weren't in use, and actively managing the thermostat!).

We started reaching out to providers of offsets and reconnected with Trees, Water and People (TWP), which manages offset projects ranging from tree-planting and stove construction in Central America and Haiti to wind power in the American west. TWP was incredibly generous with their time and expertise when I was working on Finca Mauritania's carbon footprint. They distinguished themselves from other offset providers by offering to implement a project building fuel-efficient stoves with a cooperative that Counter Culture works with in Marcala, Honduras. The COMSA cooperative is excited by the project, and I am practically giddy to think that we can integrate coffee-buying and carbon-offset-buying.

The next few months will see us collecting greenhouse gas data for the 2011 calendar year and reporting it in our annual Sustainability Scorecard, as well as continuing to deepen our relationship with TWP. I'm heading to Marcala in February, and I can't wait to see how the project is going and learn about stove-building from the experts.

Allowing total control over the variables that govern proper extraction, handcrafted brewing accentuates coffee's unique characteristics. It doesn't take much in the way of gear to produce a fantastic cup of coffee by hand, really. Plus, it's fast and easy.

With that in mind, we're always on the lookout for elegant, effective tools for small-batch brewing. The Bonavita electric kettle has a gooseneck spout, which offers ideal water flow for pourover coffee brewing – slow and controlled. The kettle heats water to boil in less than 3 minutes (remember to let water cool a minute or so to off-boil for best results) and can be set down on any countertop.

All of us here at Counter Culture have a Bonavita electric kettle, and brewing great handcrafted coffee in our home kitchens has never been easier.

Thanks,
Nathan

Note: The USPS will observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, January 16. As such, all Flat Rate Shipping packages for that day will ship via UPS Ground. We will roast, package, and ship all subscription installments on Tuesday, January 17.

Recently, I have been mulling over the great coffee conundrum: How is it possible that something so simple can also be so complicated?

Think about it – brewed coffee only has two ingredients, right? Ground coffee beans and water. They should go together effortlessly and flawlessly every time, right? Just like peanut butter and jelly, a perfect, always-delicious combination that's the easiest thing in the world to synthesize.

Except, well, it's anything but easy.

Sometimes, when I think about all the things that impact the way that those two ingredients interact, I get a little lightheaded. How much water, and how hot should it be? How much coffee, and how coarse or fine a grind? How long should I let them hang out with each other, and in what kind of brewer?

But it's true – to coffee-driven people in constant pursuit of that perfect cup, the sheer number of variables involved in bringing two seemingly simple ingredients together can be overwhelming and maddening. Or, it can be an exhilarating challenge – the thrill of the chase! And, it's for the latter group of bean-heads that we've created a new series of labs: Brew Science I, II, and III, all designed around exploring what it is that makes delicious coffee delicious, and, hopefully, to help coffee-lovers learn how to troubleshoot problematic brews.

Want to unlock the mysteries of grind size, dwell time (the duration of water in contact with coffee), agitation, even temperature? Then this is definitely the lab for you. In Part I, we examine the aforementioned variables, brewing batches of coffee in Clever drippers. Part II introduces both a new set of variants and a slightly more complicated brew method: The pourover cone, as designed by Counter Culture and developed by Bonmac. Part III is super-exciting, especially for brew geeks: We'll simply be playing around and trying to dial in on a host of different extractors, such as Chemex, Aeropress, and, yes, even a vacuum pot!

So if you're gearing up for that New Year's Resolution you made – you know, the one about brewing and drinking better coffee in 2012? – now's the time to mark your calendar for all three parts of Brew Science. Hope to see you there!